Rough Magic

I wake in Cusco, Peru, ‘the navel of the earth’, and want to die. Yesterday's headache is still with me, and I can detect new accompanying symptoms of a slight fever, body aches and fatigue. Is this altitude sickness? I don't know. Possibly. I can't summon up the energy to care. Through the curtains I can see that it is morning, and not only that but a brilliant morning. I rummage for my watch. 6 A.M.

I think I ought to get up and greet the city in the glory of the new-born day but my body refuses. So I lie there. For a quarter of an hour, curiosity and lethargy wrestle for mastery in a little room before I throw back the sheets, swallow a pill to counteract the throbbing in my skull and head out.

Three thousand three hundred metres up in the Andes the morning air is brilliantly clear. I sit in the main square, watch the sunlight wrap itself round the red-brown belltowers of the great Baroque cathedral and observe the city coming to life: impassive workers making their way to their jobs and chattering schoolgirls heading to their lessons, dressed in the ubiquitous plaid skirts that seem to be the uniform of schoolgirls the world over.

I resent the pain in my head and the aches in my body and wonder morosely if sickness is going to be my main memory of Peru's 'Sacred Valley'. But the morning light works like a blessing and by the time I get back to my hostel I am feeling a fair bit better. I shower, change my clothes and head down to a good breakfast. Then I go back to my room, feeling possessed again by an extreme tiredness. It is 8.30 in the morning. I lie down on the bed and sleep for two hours.

The Inkas thought of Cusco as the centre or ‘navel’ (qosq’o) of their universe. Nine centuries on, it’s the epicentre of South American tourism. All pilgrims on the ‘Gringo Trail’ pass through here as do many modern Peruvians, making their own journeys of discovery. The city is busy, noisy and perhaps a bit too keen to make a quick buck, but it also has some fantastic colonial and pre-colonial architecture and it occupies a breath-taking location in a high valley. At night you can follow the lights of the city as they ascend the encircling mountains to meet the stars in the sky. There is, I have to admit, something a bit magical about Cusco, and when I wake and head out into the city a second time the magic is at work on me. The pain in my head has receded and I can feel the muscles of my lower face begin to relax into a smile.